Government Social Media Strategy Must Move Beyond Tweets and 'Likes'

Government agencies have begun to see the benefits of social networking. For several years now, many agencies have implemented, if not mastered, the foundation of a social media strategy, using popular tools to share information with the public and hear what constituents are saying. Many of these efforts are tied to “open government” initiatives that aim for increased transparency and public participation.

Still, there are, no doubt, plenty of government entities that don’t make full use of the most recent advances in enterprise-class social media strategy, such as multi-site management, targeted listening, and sentiment analysis, known collectively as social relationship management (SRM). This is the logical next step in social strategy for agencies, as they look for modern, efficient, and cost-effective ways to connect with the public they serve.

And why should citizens care? Because it’s certainly true that government could benefit from the process optimization, service enablement, and cost cutting that SRM promises.

That’s why
Oracle has put together an initiative, known as the “Social Garage,” intended to work with government agencies on extending their social networking efforts to where they generate actionable engagement with constituents as well as demonstrable returns. The initiative involves consultants and engineers from Oracle as well as outside partners, and it’s aimed at all levels of government: individual agencies; city, county, state, province, and federal; even the ruling bodies of Native American tribes in North America.

The tag line for the new initiative is “engaged, informed, and educated constituents interacting with a modern government,” says Franco Amalfi, Director, Digital Engagement Strategy, for Oracle Public Sector North America. The project got the name Social Garage, Amalfi says, because the people involved hope to generate startup-like enthusiasm for innovative projects with the potential to radically transform the business of government.

Oracle isn’t as well known for its social media expertise in government circles as it is in the private sector. Recent successes there include Maersk Line, the world’s largest shipping-container company, which employed Oracle Social Cloud to consolidate and improve the effectiveness of its social media strategy, and saw an increase in Facebook fans to 1.1 million as well as nabbing 90,000
Twitter followers, 50,000
LinkedIn contacts, and 25,000 Instagram followers, all in approximately 18 months.

So the company has a lot to offer government. Oracle has spent the last few years acquiring and building an in-depth, integrated toolset of cloud-based social relationship management technologies and a deep bench of SRM experience and expertise.

One reason why social media efforts by government don’t rise to the level of YouTube sensations or Facebook favorites is that government’s goals are different from those on the consumer side. For instance, if you’re looking to forge bonds between your police force and the neighborhood watch, you’re after something different than what a celebrity website is up to. “You don’t need fans and followers,” Amalfi points out, “you need reputation building.”

Then again, government agencies aren’t completely different from businesses. “They need to find ways of streamlining processes and holding back the costs that are leaking out,” Amalfi says. And even though government’s constituents don’t behave necessarily like “customers,” that audience has developed ways of doing business online they’re comfortable with. “They want to interact with government the same way they interact with other brands,” he says.

So how can government agencies make better use of social media? First, they have to approach their objectives strategically, not tactically. They have to jettison the opportunistic efforts of the past, one-off projects focused on a single media channel with the simplistic objective of “listening” to constituents. “The past was about listening for listening sake,” says Amalfi.

Today’s sophisticated social environment offers government the potential to connect with its citizens directly, to provide information immediately and widely, and to get to the root cause of what people are unhappy about and take appropriate action to address those concerns. And that’s what SRM is designed for.

SRM can support a modern online strategy that incorporates centralized management of multiple media sites, one-to-one engagement with constituents, a single rationalized social media feed, and in-depth analysis of social data that can inform decision-making and help generate action. Oracle, with its integrated toolset and deep bench of expertise, provides a great value proposition, Amalfi points out.

Still, Amalfi expects some government officials to be skeptical of the impact of SRM. “After all, what’s in it for them?” he says. “They’re not looking to drive up sales, so where’s the ROI coming from?” He admits demonstrating ROI connected to use of SRM in government could be tricky. For one thing, the technology hasn’t been around long enough, like other enterprise systems, to provide a long list of customer references. Also, some likely government use cases—such as preparing for a possible flash mob that’s organizing on Twitter and Facebook—don’t lend themselves to clear-cut returns.

On the other hand, SRM in government has the potential to be “a lot more innovative than in the private sector,” Amalfi maintains. That would be the result of the diverse uses and varying goals government agencies will look to accomplish with SRM—well beyond simply selling more widgets.

And that’s a significant reason why Oracle is so enthusiastic about this project, about being a part of the innovation and evolution in SRM that increased involvement by government agencies will represent. Says Amalfi: “We’re focused on the same things they’re focused on.”

Source: iStockphoto

John Soat is a freelance writer specializing in business and technology.